


The Limbs Remember Everything

by macneiceisms



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macneiceisms/pseuds/macneiceisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the other Jaegers boasted names like Crimson Roar, Black Kraken, Trident Thunder, Typhoon Stag, but Ned Stark’s Jaeger was named Ice. Winter is coming, Arya’s father used to say, to which Arya liked to reply, the Kaiju are coming, papa, like he was the silliest man in the world. Her father was dead now, and so was her mother and Robb. She had lived half her life on this very Alaskan base, but after the attack that killed her father, there had been no base to go back to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> this is not a Serious Multichapter Fic like No Kingdom, rather a collection of drabbles in this universe that i've made. enjoy.

“The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that’s left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.”

\- Boris Pasternak, _Doctor Zhivago_

 

1.

Arya supposed a person could learn to like Kamchatka. Or at least tolerate it. For one, it was pretty in spring, and when she had a weekend off training she would take Sergei’s rusty motorbike inland and spend some time alone hiking. There were fields of wildflowers that would stretch out for miles, and at the tops of hills, there would be hot springs stinking of sulphur blowing steam out of the ground. It wasn’t nearly as cold as Yakutz in winter here either, though Arya had never really minded the cold. She was growing restless.

“We have to get out of here, Nym,” said Arya, scratching Nymeria behind the ears. “We could take a train up to the Arctic Wall and see Jon again. He wouldn’t have time for us though. He’s Marshal now.”

Her German shepherd only bumped her cold wet nose against Arya’s arm, asking to be pet again. It was early morning, hours before dawn in a Kamchatkan autumn. Only a month ago Arya would have already been down in the training bay getting in a morning exercise, then she’d grab an early bowl of porridge from the kitchen and scout out the Jeagar bay before any of the pilots got down. She was friends with all the mechanics and technicians, from the garage boys who fixed up the helicopters and cars to the hydraulics specialists to the neural circuits engineers. Now half the teams had moved to a southern station and Sergei had forbade her from overtraining. Sergei could stop her from boxing downstairs, but he couldn’t stop her from training in her own room. Did he think she was some child that would pop her shoulder or rip a muscle? She wasn't weak. She could handle the training as well as any man.

Arya sighed and stood up from her cot, her joints cracking as she stretched.

“One: knifehead,” she counted, bringing her chin up to the bar suspended from her low ceiling. “Slattern,” she whispered, up again, “leatherback, raiju, scunner. Two: knifehead, slattern, leatherback, raiju, scunner. Three: knifehead, slattern, leatherback, raiju, scunner. Four.”

The alarm sounded. Arya dropped from the bar, pulled on her jacket and boots, and ran.

 

2.

“Starkova,” called Sergei, “Starkova, come.”

Arya looked up to the catwalk from where she had been chatting with Dasha about the snapped hydraulic in Volk Sibersk’s left elbow. She nodded and trotted off up the stairs towards her trainer, her combat boots clattering on the metal walkway.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m going to need you to pack your bags, Starkova,” he said grimly. Well, more grim than usual. Sergei was as sour as his favorite fermented cabbage.

“My bags?” Arya asked. “I'm leaving?”

"Plane for you, _zaftra_. Eight hundred."

“But Kolia's broken his arm. You need a pilot. I can drift with Katya, I can pilot.”

“Volk Sibersk is being decommissioned and Katya and Kolia will be going to the Wall for patrol."

“You’re shutting down? Can I go to the Wall too? My brother is the Marshal, I could-”

"You’re going back to Alaska, no question, no argue," he said in his thick accent, scratching his silver streaked mustache. "Pack your bags, Arya, and don't forget your _Aftcharka_ ," he said, patting Nymeria's head. 

 

3.

Winterfell Base didn’t look like she had remembered as a child. Every brick and piece of steel was brand new, barely weathered, and somehow smaller than before. It was sleeting. The bag at her shoulder was heavy as she lifted it from the seat of the cramped FJ Cruiser that had taken her from the airport. Nymeria jumped out after Arya, running carefree on the icy asphalt after being confined for hours.

“Barracks are through those gates, Miss Stark. Someone should meet you at the base entrance.”

Arya slipped and fell hard on the asphalt halfway down to the base entrance, and staggered the rest of the way, her knee aching while Nymeria, unhelpfully, bounded around like an overexcited puppy.

“Shouldn’t you be too old for this?” Arya scowled, watching as Nymeria slid round on the slick asphalt, her legs as gangly and uncoordinated as they had been as puppy. She was ecstatic.

“Watch out there’s…” came a voice from in front of her. Arya whipped her head around, and slipped on a patch of wet ice, her bag skidding to the side and her landing on her ass as ungracefully as anyone possibly could. “…A patch of ice,” the man in front of her trailed off. He was tall and broad, his face smudged with engine grease. “If you’re going to stay here you should really learn how to walk in a little bit of sleet.”

Nymeria bounded over to him and sniffed at his jacket, then licked his gloves. _Traitor_ , thought Arya.

“You could at least help me up,” said Arya. He pulled her up easily, and for good measure swung her bag over his back as if it didn’t weigh fourty pounds.

“So what are you?” he asked. “Tech specialist? Engineer?”

Arya began to answer, but before she said a word, she was greeted by current Marshal Umber. At least it had saved her an answer. I don’t know what I am, would have been her response.

“There you are!” boomed the Greatjon. “With the weather, I thought you’d be later that you are.”

Nymeria sniffed him too, but didn’t let him scratch her ears. She doubled back behind Arya and sat dutifully beside her bag.

“Marshal Umber,” bowed the man that had greeted her, leaving Arya’s bag on the ground. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought. He gave Arya a long look and disappeared through a hallway towards what Arya assumed was the Jaeger bay. She supposed she would have to find him later. Not thanking him would be rude, and besides, he might be able to tell her a bit about this place.

“Marshal Umber,” Arya said, smiling. “How good to see you again.”

“Lets get you settled first, then you can see your family.”

“My family?” Arya asked, surprised.

“They’re here,” smiled the Greatjon.

“No one told me they were here. Bran? Rickon? Sansa?”

“All of them. Bran is in the lab. He’s our best scientist. Your youngest brother is in pilot training with a good sim score for his age. And your sister, well, we’ll get to that. We’ll put your things down and then see the Jaeger bay. Your room is this way,” said Marshal Umber and led her to her chambers.

 

4.

All the other Jaegers boasted names like Crimson Roar, Black Kraken, Trident Thunder, Typhoon Stag, but Ned Stark’s Jaeger was named Ice. _Winter is coming,_ Arya’s father used to say, to which Arya liked to reply, _the Kaiju are coming, papa,_ like he was the silliest man in the world. Her father was dead now. Her mother and Robb had followed only couple years later. She had lived half her life on this very Alaskan base, but after the attack that killed her father, there had been no base to go back to, not for years and years. No one had come back. The base bore all the markings of fresh construction: unpacked gravel, fences untouched by rust, shining steel and clean concrete.

Only a year later the news had said that the Washington base where her remaining family had been staying was hit too quickly and hardly anyone had time to escape. Robb had died killing the Raiju. Bran had been paralyzed. Her mother had died, refusing to evacuate once she'd seen the Jeager fall. Arya and Sansa had taken the news separately, and from afar. After that, nothing but running, escaping another attack, trying to find a way home, had been all that mattered, but there had not been a home to go back to, there had been no one at Winterfell until now. 

“She’s being reinstated. We don’t have the funds to build a new one. If the Pacific Wall works, we'll all be shut down anyways.”

"How can they shut the program down?” asked Arya, staring up at the empty fuel reactor of her father’s old Jaeger. “They don't even know if it'll work.”

“It'll be politics until it's proven to work or proven to fail. We're still the only line of defense, and pilots are running as thin as Jeagers.”

“I can pilot,” said Arya. “I’ve been training since I was a girl.”

“Ever been in a neural handshake? Piloted an actual Jaeger?” came a voice from behind Arya. It was Gendry, the mechanic specialist who had helped her outside.

“No,” said Arya.

“Simulator?”

“Fourty two drops. Fourty two kills.”

He let out a low whistle.

“Gendry here is our suit guy,” said Marshal Umber.

“Main suit guy, sir,” he reminded. “I’ve been doing suit design and engineering here for two years. She’s half finished now,” Gendry pointed to the white and silver Jaeger above their heads. “Core replacement, hydraulics in the knees and wrists need fixing, and the neural interface is being updated to match the new suits.”

“You still haven’t told me whose piloting her,” Arya asked Umber, her eyes flicking to Gendry briefly. He gave her a queer look in return.

“You’ll want to come with me, Miss Arya.” _I’m not anyone’s miss_ , she wanted to snap.

 

5.

The Marshal’s office was hardly more that a bunker room with a desk, and sitting in front of the desk was a woman with long, dark red hair tied up into neat ponytail with a gray ribbon. Arya was immediately disappointed, and she’d only seen the back of this woman’ head.

“Marshal Umber,” she said as she turned around, but then her greeting turned into a shocked gasp.

Arya did not do the same. She just stood frozen in the doorway, her mind racing from summers at the Base to home with Mother to Father showing them the control room, to Sansa’s new puppy being put down from Kaiju contamination, to her swearing she would never go into a base, that she would never follow Father or Robb.

“You,” Arya said. “You’re piloting Ice.”

“Not even a hello,” Sansa said, her voice strained.

“Not even a…fucking hells, Sansa!” Arya yelled, roused from her stupor and walking very quickly towards where her sister sat in her chair.

“Arya!” Sansa cried, blocking the arm that shot out to hit her across the head more deftly than Arya could have imagined. “Arya, stop it!”

Another block, then a strike on Sansa’s part.

“You sold us all out! You left! You left, you swore you would have nothing to do with this! You said we were the monsters!”

“I was eleven!” Sansa returned. She knocked out one of Arya’s knees and took her halfway down. Arya was quick, and recovered with a duck and a quick hit.

“You swore you wouldn’t even look at another Jaeger,” said Arya panting as Sansa backed down.

“I didn’t want to. You remember I wanted to stay with Myrcella in Los Angeles. Well, there was an attack there too. Early on. Petyr Baelish took me in at the base and trained me. I hated it. All this killing…all these horrible machines. It’s not for me. But I was good at it, turns out. I could drift. So when I was done with training I came back here.”

“What’s your simulator score?”

“Thirty drops, twenty eight kills. Yours?”

“What makes you think I’ve touched a simulator?”

“Because you were trained just like me. To be a pilot. Unlike me, that was everything you ever wanted, not that Father would have ever allowed you.”

“No, that was going to be Robb’s great legacy. I could have gone into engineering. Unlike you I was good at it.”

Sansa bristled, then exhaled, straightening her jacket and the ribbon in her hair.

“So what’s your score?” asked Sansa.

“Fourty two, fourty two.”

Sansa was silent, but there was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth that didn’t reach her eyes. Something resigned, something closed off.

“She’s my copilot,” Sansa said to Marshal Umber, but not looking away from Arya’s face.

“She is not,” said Arya, and turned on her heel and left the way she had come.


	2. II

6.

“Bran?” Arya said, peeking into the laboratory. “Bran?”

Arya heard the whir of wheels against metal.

“It’s Doctor Stark, how many times must I,” he stopped, seeing Arya for the first time after coming out from a corner. “Arya?” he asked. Bran was grown now, with dark red hair and thick rimmed glasses and a silver wheelchair.

“Did you really forget your big sister?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Who do you think found out where you were? Took the better part of this year, tracking you down. Half of us thought you were dead, but I didn’t think so. I contacted all the bases myself asking around and when I finally got to the Russian base, there you were. Have you seen Rickon? Sansa?”

Arya laughed softly. “Rickon demanded a fight the minute I saw him to prove my identity. He’s gotten wild now, god.”

“Who won?”

“Nymeria did,” Arya said. “Tackled him flat.”

“Good,” said Bran. “He should get used to a little defeat every now and then. If he’s too aggressive no one’s going to put him in a Jaeger.” Bran shook his head of short curls and smiled. Arya was struck by how little she knew about him and what his life had been like in the years she had been gone. They had such a short time here. A Kaiju attack could be anytime and everything Arya had known would be gone in an instant. _Maybe that’s why I ran away. If you don’t have any one, you can’t lose anyone._ Arya sat down at a stool beside a lab bench, sighing.

“So how did you end up a scientist? What’s your doctorate even in?” Arya asked.

“Finally she asks,” Bran joked, rolling up his wheelchair next to her to grab a bite of a bagel that had been sitting next to the counter.

“There’s Kaiju intestine ten inches away from that, do you really want to eat it?”

“Absolutely,” said Bran, mouth full of bagel. “I’ve got a doctorate in molecular biology. I’m a Kaiju specialist. I suspect that once these attacks are done I’ll be out of a job, but I could always work on the remains. Museum stuff. Maybe write a textbook.”

Arya had never thought about what she would do if the attacks stopped. She didn’t think the war would ever be over. For her it was something that had always been and always would be; it filled every bit of her childhood and every conceivable future for her ended with a Kaiju and the only variables existed in when or how: on the coast or in a Jaeger, tomorrow, next month, next year, in the next ten years.

“It seems so long ago we were kids playing with kendo sticks, but I remember all of it like it was yesterday. How did we end up here?” she said, biting her lip.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we really had much of a choice really, in the end. We couldn’t pretend like the Kaiju attacks weren’t our problem, not after losing Father and then Robb, and Mother too. We all had a choice of where to go, I suppose. It’s just that we were pointed in the same direction Father was going in.”

“You’re too old for your age.”

“It’s the glasses,” Bran sighed, but he was smiling. “You should have written or called or even emailed. I worried about you. Sansa and I both thought you might have been dead, and for you to come back to pilot Father’s Jaeger with Sansa of all people.” Bran laughed, like he didn’t quite believe it was happening.

“I wouldn’t ask for anything in this war to make sense. That would be too much,” said Arya.

“You’re home. You’re going to fight. That much makes sense to me.”

 

 

7.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Gendry accused when he found Arya lying down on the floor of the pilot’s cabin. Arya opened her eyes. He was standing over her, work shirt unbuttoned over his singlet. The wrenches and bolts in the tool belt slung low on his hips had rattled as he walked up. If his damn boots weren’t so loud she still would have heard him halfway down the metal walkway.

“Can’t a pilot take a look at her own Jaeger?” she said dryly. It was her father’s Jaeger, and then Robb’s. Both of them had died right there in the rigs a couple feet away from her head. Robb had died in the right seat, her father in the left while his copilot, Robert Baratheon, had taken the Jaeger to shore and died a week later in the hospital.

“You’re piloting Ice?” he scoffed.

“You don’t think I can do it?” she snapped.

“You’re so…small. Pilots are big men and women. You’ll snap like twig in there.”

“I can handle it,” she said. “I just don’t know if my sister can.”

“Your sister? Miss Stark?”

“Yep. Sansa. All she ever wanted was to move somewhere like New York or Los Angeles or, I dunno, Paris or something stupid like that and play the harp and be a PTA mom. She couldn’t wait to leave Alaska. She thought it was too quiet and boring and always made us invite her whole school for her birthday parties and host them like a real gala or something. Now she’s my copilot. Funny how things turn out in wars.”

“Are you two even drift compatible? None of this is going to work if you aren’t,” he said, squatting down to adjust screws in the rig for the pilots. He flexed each of the joints, and when he found something that needed fixing his face scrunched up and he would fiddle with some wrenches and screwdrivers until he was satisfied. Arya closed her eyes again, listening to the sound of him working.

“We are. We’re testing the neural interface tomorrow.”

“Tell me if you want me to break something on purpose,” he said.

Arya sat up.

“You would do that?” she asked. “You’re joking. You’ve spent years rebuilding Ice, you wouldn’t sabotage her.”

“It’s not a habit of mine,” he warned.

“You don’t have to,” said Arya finally while Gendry stared at her. “It’ll be fine. Family, duty, honor, my mother used to say.”

Gendry continued to work in silence, and Arya watched everything he did carefully. He oiled the hydraulic there and with just that much oil, moved it up and out and then to the left. Once or twice he tossed a tiny screwdriver to her and pointed at screws, seeing if she could tell whether they need loosening or tightening or replacement. She only got three wrong.

 

 

8.

One morning, Gendry was gone. Arya did her morning routine with nothing out of the ordinary, even managing in a couple more pushups and curl ups, and made her way down to the Jaeger bay with Nymeria at her heels and a bowl of hot oats in hand.

“Gendry?” she called, trying to find him at his workstation while Nymeria did her usual sniffing around. He was usually awake by now. “Maybe he’s ill,” Arya said to Nymeria, scratching her behind the ears. He hadn’t said anything to her about not feeling well, but Arya supposed that even someone as strong as Gendry could wake up with the sniffles. The Jaeger bay was mostly empty so early in the morning; there were always some people up in case of an emergency, people with nightmares, people who worked through the night and slept in short intervals, people who sat at the comm systems, but this morning felt almost ghostly. Ice loomed over her head.

“You looking for Gendry?” Harwin asked.

“He’s usually here,” said Arya, turning her head to him. He had deep bags under his eyes and his coat was wet from melted snow.

“I just drove him out to the airport.”

“The airport?”

“He’s flying to Juneau. He should be back tomorrow.”

Arya breathed a sigh of relief. Of course Gendry wouldn’t leave permanently, and not like this; sneaking away in the middle of the night and not telling her. 

“He didn’t want to wake you,” said Harwin. “I said we could, you wake up early and all but he got all bullheaded the way he does. You know. You’re the only person that talks to him.”

 

 

9.

With her hood up and her earwarmers tight on her ears, the world around Arya was limited to nothing but the way the snow looked melting into the icy slush on the gravel path under her feet. Her boots moved in an even rhythm, down to a millisecond. Nymeria trotted alongside her, her big black paws coming into Arya’s vision as timely and precise as the movement of her own combat boots. Arya didn’t know how long she had been walking. On her fifth lap around the facility, Sansa came trotting up to her in the freezing rain, telling her she’d missed their training session.

“I’m getting a workout just fine like this.”

“You’ll catch a cold if you’re out here much longer,” said Sansa, her breath misting. Her usually sleek hair was hidden under her fur lined hood, but a frizzy crown of red remained at her temples. “And you know that’s not the point, Arya. We have to train together to make sure we’re ready to pilot. This is about us working together. Don’t you understand?”

Arya clenched her jaw.

“We’re drift compatible, that’s enough. I don’t need to spend any more time bonding. Catch you in the drift,” said Arya, and turned to trudge through the mud where Sansa wouldn’t follow. Nymeria trotted off in front of her with her nose low to the ground.

“You’re just avoiding me,” Sansa said, voice raised.

“I won’t deny it,” Arya called back. “Go have tea with some friends of yours. Play dress up, I don’t know.”

“I don’t have any here,” Sansa shouted. “You should know that, Miss I’m-More-Observant-Than-Everyone-Else!”

Arya turned around.

“Well, don’t blame that on me. You could be living the socialite life in New York. I don’t know why you’re here.”

“I’m here because this is my home! I’m here because I have nowhere else to go! Just like you, Arya.”

“We have two things in common,” said Arya. “We have the same parents, and we have the same occupation. If you never wanted to be here how can it be your home?”

“When I was gone, this place was all I ever thought about. That makes it home.”

Arya scoffed, kicking the mud at her feet. There was truth in Sansa’s words as much as Arya didn’t want there to be.

“I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t really care,” said Arya, and as she’d calculated, Sansa’s face crumpled despite her sister’s best efforts to keep it unmoved. Immediately Arya felt sorry, regret rushing into her stomach. _I don’t owe her anything. She left us. She didn’t want anything to do with us._ But the guilt persisted even when Arya left her sister in the freezing rain, even another hour of walking later, even as she woke the next morning with Nymeria curled at her feet and taking up half the cot.

 


	3. III

10.

Tomorrow came and went with Gendry still gone. The itching sense of dread and worry at the back of her thoughts only increased as the day had gone on, and by the time it was time for her to sleep, she tossed and turned, trying to think about anything but the storm in Juneau, the unfinished suits, Ice, her father, Jon, Bran, Sansa, the people she’d seen killed, every single face, every single broken body. By 0100 she was shaking under her blanket, Nymeria nudging her nose into Arya’s back, whining as she licked her bare, cold shoulder. By 0200, Arya was still in bed, every muscle tense and every noise, every bang, creak, and footfall sending a painful jolt down her spine. Any of those noises could be danger, any one person not paying attention on the night shift, any failed sensor could have a Kaiju on the shore in minutes and the whole base leveled, every single person dead with no one to stop the monster from making its way inland. She did not sleep the whole night, and halfway through her vigil, heart pounding and pounding, the heating system turned on, the vents above clanging to life. Arya screamed. Scrambling from her cot with her blankets tangled around her, she flailed, hitting her head on the corner of her bed, Nymeria nearly howling as Arya twisted and screamed. She ripped half a nail off along with the blanket. In the corner of her bunker, Arya sat shaking, a cold sweat across her face and her chest, her finger bleeding freely over her neck as she scratched mindlessly, purposefully. Not even her skin was safe; there was no one here to protect her. She would die tonight, she would surely die. A Kaiju was coming. Arya was alone. Everyone was gone and there was no one left to protect her.

 

 

11.

Arya woke to the sound of Nymeria barking, and the sound of someone knocking against her door, calling her name.

“Arya?” she heard, “Are you in there?”

Arya lost the warm heat around her, feeling very cold and very stiff. She opened an eye. Nymeria was whining and yipping, pawing and the locked door.

“Arya?” came the voice again. “If you’re alright, say something.”

Arya opened her mouth, but her lips cracked and nothing came out when she tried to call back. She licked her lips and tasted blood. After a moment’s pause there was the squeak of metal, and the door opened. When Gendry saw her curled on the floor in the dark, he dropped whatever was in his hands and ran to her. The keys or tools or whatever they were fell hard against the floor. He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed her blanket and wrapped it around her, lifting her up easily to set her down on her bed. The clock there said 0600. She would usually have had breakfast by now.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, but Arya couldn’t muster up the strength to do anything but blink at him. Her eyes felt raw, and so did the skin at her neck and shoulders. Gendry took a packet of tissues from his pocket and pulled a couple out, poured some water from her water bottle onto them and wiped the crusted blood from her face and hands. He didn’t look into her eyes as he did it, concentrating entirely on the part in question the same as he did when he worked on his robotics. But rather than scientific coldness, Arya felt a gentleness. She began to feel warm, and after she felt warm, her eyelids drooping and closing with exhaustion, the acute sense of being alone that had followed her since her father had died was somehow lessened. _Safe,_ was the last thing she thought before falling deep into sleep.

 

 

12.

“What are these made of?” Arya asked Gendry, flexing the joints on the suit, getting used to the feel of it. “It’s lighter than the ones I had before.”

“Carbon fiber,” he said. “Special order. Two female pilots is rare. You’re both tall enough, but still, smaller. Especially you,” said Gendry, ignoring the indignant ‘hey!’ from Arya. “The rig is hard enough, and if you had heavy suits the two of you would tire too quickly. Not to mention if you needed to get out quickly,” he said frowning.

“You special ordered these for us?”

“I ordered the carbon fiber. The whole suit I made myself.”

“Yourself?”

“I didn’t trust Harwin with the robotics. Those suits, after the Jaeger, is the only thing protecting. And if the suit fails, you can’t pilot.”

Arya swallowed. If she couldn’t pilot right in the middle of an attack, it wouldn’t just be her life on the line.

“They won’t fail. You made them.”

Gendry gave her a half smile and then checked where the rigging connected to her arms and legs.

“You should have good mobility in this,” he said. Then, he looked up at her. “If you’re deployed for real…” he started to say, and then fell silent.

“What?” asked Arya.

“The suits are expensive. Try to come back.”

“And have you yell at me for damaging your designs? No way,” said Arya smiling, but it felt oddly tight on her face. Gendry walked up to her with the spine piece in hand and gave her a long look. She wasn’t sure what his clenched jaw meant. Sansa’s neural circuit was already being secured by another technician, and she spared Arya a quick look before she turned back to steel herself. Arya should have probably tried to do the same, but if she thought too hard, she was afraid she might throw up over Gendry’s boots. They might have been old but there was an odd pride to how clean he kept them.

“You okay?” Gendry asked, close to her ear. She felt the lumbar piece secure, and the rest of the spine followed.

“Okay,” she returned. The last thing she saw before the neural interface booted was Gendry’s face pulled into a dark frown, still fretting over the rigging she was in. _Catch you in the drift,_ she almost said.

 

 

13.

Arya pulled off her helmet gasping. On her left was Sansa, already emptying her breakfast on the cabin floor. Her first instinct was to go to Sansa and help her up, to hold her after the nightmare that had been their first drift, all the memories overlapping. They had both chased the rabbit, following each other’s memories back to Mother and Father and Robb. It couldn’t have been helped. Arya was still shaking when she managed to stand, every joint and muscle in her body screaming. _Every hurt is a lesson,_ Sergei had said.

“Come on Sansa,” Arya urged. The cabin doors had opened and the crew was there, checking the rigging and a medic was bustling about, trying to get between Arya and her sister. “Come on Sansa,” she repeated, and with all her remaining strength swung Sansa’s arm over her shoulder and stood. She got them off the walkway.

“Something was wrong,” said Sansa. “Something was wrong. I kept wanting to use my right side, but that side was yours.”

“The right interface is dominant, Sansa, you know I have more experience than you.”

“But you’re left handed,” she said. Arya stilled.

“They need to switch the interface,” Arya said, half to herself.

“We can’t just switch seats?” Sansa asked.

“No. It doesn’t work that way. It’s calibrated for higher efficiency on the right to save power on a weaker left. The whole thing needs to be recomputed and the hydraulics adjusted.”

“You would have been a good engineer,” Sansa said weakly, and then her eyes closed from exhaustion.

“You would have been a good soccer mom and novelist and ballerina and harpist too,” said Arya, supporting Sansa slumped on the bench beside her.

“Now all be have to be is good pilots,” sighed Sansa, fading into sleep with every passing moment.

“You already are a good pilot,” said Arya softly, and helped Marshal Umber pick up her sleeping sister in his arms.

 

 

14.

“How did you get here?” asked Arya quietly, not wanting to break the silence on the catwalk as Gendry sat beside her, their legs dangling a hundred feet in the air, eyes level with the reactor core of Ice. _Our Jaeger,_ she almost called it. The catwalk was dark and the lights below in the bay were dimmed to nighttime capacity. In the dark she felt like she could almost talk about her first drift, but mostly she just wanted to think about something else before the attack on Winterfell base came flashing back to her.

“I worked in Dr. Tohbo Mott’s lab as part of a scholarship. He was one of the robotics engineers behind these things. I guess he saw something in me and took me in under his wing, taught me everything.”

“But you left Los Angeles?”

“There was an attack. A Knifehead got ashore and the city was in ruins, so I left. Got chased out, rather. Weren’t anywhere left for me to live with half the city in ruins and I went north, first to the Portland base, and then Alaska.”

“What about your family?” asked Arya, passing him the thermos full of hot chocolate. Gendry took it and poured it into the cup, steam rising in the cold bay.

“My mother died when I was young, and I never knew my father. The way she would talk about him sometimes made me think he was someone was someone important. She watched the news a lot. All the coverage of the Kaiju attacks, so I grew up wanting to do something about them,” he said and drank.

“I’m sorry she’s gone,” said Arya.

“I’m sorry too. About your family,” he said quietly. “Your father was one hell of a Ranger; a proper one too. Not like that Baratheon fellow that was his partner.”

“Robert liked the fame,” Arya said. Her father’s partner had liked to drink and wrestle and go to parties and do interviews, but he had always been around to say something nice, and never said anything about her being too wild. He’d even said she looked like Aunt Lyanna, Papa’s sister. Aunt Lyanna had been beautiful, while Arya had been nothing but dirty.

“Weren’t anyone more famous than him back then.”

“You kind of look like him,” said Arya, noticing it for the first time. Maybe it was the blue eyes and the tan skin, maybe it was something else, like the shape of his face or the line between his brows.

“I’ve heard that one before,” said Gendry. “Probably because he was from Mexico too. I could say the same for you. Half the girls in Alaska look like you.”

“That’s because half the girls in Alaska are my cousins.”

“Really?”

“Everyone’s got big families here. There’s not much else for people to do, really.” Gendry ducked his head, his cheeks turning very red. Arya giggled and poked him in the arm.

“Ow,” he grinned.

“Sorry, didn’t know I was talking to the Virgin Mary,” Arya retorted. His hand went to the row of buttons on his worn gray henley before he stopped himself, laughing thinly, and put his hands back into the pockets of his jacket. Arya averted her eyes.

“Could I have some more hot chocolate?” Gendry said, clearing his throat a few long moments later. Arya passed the thermos to him in silence. As he poured, Arya’s eyes found their way to where the collar of his green standard issue jacket covered his neck; there, when he moved just so, she could see the glint of silver, shinier than the metal chain of dog tags, and more delicate. They sat in silence and drained the thermos together well into the night.


End file.
